Anthroposophy for Dummies

Any topics primarily focused on metaphysics can be discussed here, in a generally casual way, where conversations may take unexpected turns.
Anthony66
Posts: 224
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2021 12:43 pm

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by Anthony66 »

Ashvin,

I wish there was some form of thumbs up mechanism I could use to let you know I have read your prior responses. Be assured I have and I thank you again for them. Note, it is not my intention at this stage to provide any significant push back - I'm in an understanding phase.

I think the next two points can be lumped together here. I'll push back a little in order to gain clarity.
AshvinP wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 4:28 pm 3. Polar essence of all experience, i.e. Eternal-temporal, Unity-multiplicity, Universal-particular, Light-darkness, Warmth-coldness, and infinitely more.

4. Threefold essence of all experience - Willing-Feeling-Thinking, Body-Soul-Spirit, spatial dimensions, and many more (there are almost always threefold relations within the threefold relations, sometimes 3 sets of threefold relations to make nine-fold relation). Many other qualitative numeric relations are very important as well.

- Also note most essential relations are mirrored, i.e. they have relations with inverted qualities within spatiotemporal structure.
I guess the main thing that strikes me here is that these seem derivative, secondary, an abstraction, or conceptual schemes. They don't seem like primary phenomenal experiences. In meditative states, one is able for example to deeply experience the sense of warmth and perhaps break it down into greater levels of resolution perhaps by noting a vibratory aspect or the like. One doesn't juxtapose it with the phenomenons of coldness in these states.

I don't see a particular specialness of threefold. We have four-fold essences - the four winds, the four corners, the four-fold taxonomy of consciousness, the four aspects of the human being, the fourfold atman. Likewise we could look at a variety of seven-fold aspects.
User avatar
AshvinP
Posts: 5457
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:00 am
Location: USA

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by AshvinP »

Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:15 pm
AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:57 pm Ben,

As I keep saying, it is silly for you to confuse your own lethargic ignorance for my lack of "honesty".
And so the trend of tit-for-tat annoyance continues. In this regard, I would also look to Cleric as an exemplar of how to engage without the trigger-effect.

Fair point. It would be nice if people who ask for fragmentation of the forum so they can carry on their own discussions apart from spiritual science would not then seek out the Anthroposophy thread to comment on what they apparently have no interest in, based on their own misunderstandings of what was previously written, and then proceed to level accusations of dishonesty at someone for associating the word "spirit" with "thinking" activity. So I guess your suggestion is to completely ignore these comments? I'll see what I can do.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
User avatar
AshvinP
Posts: 5457
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:00 am
Location: USA

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by AshvinP »

Anthony66 wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:32 pm Ashvin,

I wish there was some form of thumbs up mechanism I could use to let you know I have read your prior responses. Be assured I have and I thank you again for them. Note, it is not my intention at this stage to provide any significant push back - I'm in an understanding phase.

I think the next two points can be lumped together here. I'll push back a little in order to gain clarity.
AshvinP wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 4:28 pm 3. Polar essence of all experience, i.e. Eternal-temporal, Unity-multiplicity, Universal-particular, Light-darkness, Warmth-coldness, and infinitely more.

4. Threefold essence of all experience - Willing-Feeling-Thinking, Body-Soul-Spirit, spatial dimensions, and many more (there are almost always threefold relations within the threefold relations, sometimes 3 sets of threefold relations to make nine-fold relation). Many other qualitative numeric relations are very important as well.

- Also note most essential relations are mirrored, i.e. they have relations with inverted qualities within spatiotemporal structure.
I guess the main thing that strikes me here is that these seem derivative, secondary, an abstraction, or conceptual schemes. They don't seem like primary phenomenal experiences. In meditative states, one is able for example to deeply experience the sense of warmth and perhaps break it down into greater levels of resolution perhaps by noting a vibratory aspect or the like. One doesn't juxtapose it with the phenomenons of coldness in these states.

I don't see a particular specialness of threefold. We have four-fold essences - the four winds, the four corners, the four-fold taxonomy of consciousness, the four aspects of the human being, the fourfold atman. Likewise we could look at a variety of seven-fold aspects.

Anthony,

You are welcome and I appreciate your considerate good faith dialogue as well. This deep curiosity into the phenomena of our experience is really a most critical aspect of spiritual science - no concrete experience is too trivial to be disregarded.

We can certainly observe the polar essence in our concrete Thinking activity (and other activities by way of thought). I will point back to Cleric's initial comment to you on this thread (I know it can be very difficult to keep all of this new information in mind, but that's really what we need to train ourselves to do - remember all previous relations that helped us make sense of our phenomenal experience when considering new ones):

Cleric wrote:Seems you are more familiar with Eastern concepts. Consider this. Nowadays people speak about polarities, masculine/feminine, yin/yang, etc. Everyone will habitually agree that there should be a kind of interplay and dynamic balance between them. Yet in the Eastern schools of meditation you'll discover that there's a great imbalance. One repels all thoughts, all soul content, and succumbs into quiet and passive contemplation, expecting that within this panorama he'll be bestowed with the answers to the riddles of the Universe. Strangely, one rarely asks "What about the dynamic balance? Where's the masculine principle in this?" If you perform the "I think the speech" exercise you can have first hand living experience of what the Masculine principle refers to. You are the active, creative force that brings the spoken thoughts into existence. Now you experience yourself as actual spiritual being, which actively contributes content to the panorama (Soul). This is what Spirit refers to. It's not something that you postulate in order to externally explain your activity, like the materialist will imagine that there's a brain in the 'real' world that processes signals and we only perceive its output with the additional illusion that we are somehow responsible for the thoughts. No, this only deviates our attention from the actual activity of speaking forth thoughts - including those that try to convince us that our livingly experienced spiritual activity has nothing to do with the 'real' causes. Spirit is only a word that refers not to something that might or might not exist but to our intimately experienced active beingness.

All of the these twofold (polarity of One-many, etc.), threefold (W-F-T activities), fourfold (space-time dimensions), sevenfold (evolutionary stages), tenfold, twelvefold, etc. qualitative relations are very important. They are all pointing to the same spiritual realm of meaningful qualities from different angles and, most importantly, to our own thinking involvement in the phenomenal world. We must use abstract concepts to relate these things to each other with speech (although Cleric does a great job using more images of concrete experience), but that's just our own limitation here - the concepts should always be understood as pointing to concrete qualities of experience in every moment of our lives, and the qualitative history of humanity and the Cosmos as a whole. My recent essays on 4th epoch mythology are exploring the threefold and fourfold essences. I will soon be posting an essay on the latter, as it manifests in the space-time dimensions (which is really about as broadly concrete as we can get), and I think that will be very helpful to your questions/concerns above. I will notify you here as well when it is posted (hopefully by tomorrow).
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
User avatar
AshvinP
Posts: 5457
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:00 am
Location: USA

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by AshvinP »

AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:19 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:15 pm
AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:57 pm Ben,

As I keep saying, it is silly for you to confuse your own lethargic ignorance for my lack of "honesty".
And so the trend of tit-for-tat annoyance continues. In this regard, I would also look to Cleric as an exemplar of how to engage without the trigger-effect.

Fair point. It would be nice if people who ask for fragmentation of the forum so they can carry on their own discussions apart from spiritual science would not then seek out the Anthroposophy thread to comment on what they apparently have no interest in, based on their own misunderstandings of what was previously written, and then proceed to level accusations of dishonesty at someone for associating the word "spirit" with "thinking" activity. So I guess your suggestion is to completely ignore these comments? I'll see what I can do.

Sorry I have to make another comment on this. Actually a question for you, Dana - when you read Ben's comment that it is weird (or dishonest) to associate "Thinking" with "spiritual activity", did you automatically know why that is absolutely false? A part of the reason for responding is my concern that people read that comment and actually think it is a fair point. That is how alienated we are from our own Thinking at this point. We have no idea what it is or how it functions in the world of phenomenal experience. We certainly have no idea how it relates to history, mythology, and spiritual tradition. And we also feel our concrete Thinking activity about qualities of experience is "abstract" while our pure quantitative abstractions about "MAL", QM, and what not are concrete. Everything is flipped upside down these days and it's easy for people to get sucked into this completely inverted sense of truth. If Ben just writes a comment about how I am a dishonest person, then I could probably avoid responding, because I know anyone who takes such an unwarranted accusation seriously is not worth convincing otherwise, but if he also adds to the confusion about Thinking activity which is already so confused to the extent that people have no idea what it is referring to anymore, then I feel some response is necessary.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
User avatar
Soul_of_Shu
Posts: 2023
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2021 6:48 pm
Contact:

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by Soul_of_Shu »

AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:19 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:15 pm
AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:57 pm Ben,

As I keep saying, it is silly for you to confuse your own lethargic ignorance for my lack of "honesty".
And so the trend of tit-for-tat annoyance continues. In this regard, I would also look to Cleric as an exemplar of how to engage without the trigger-effect.

Fair point. It would be nice if people who ask for fragmentation of the forum so they can carry on their own discussions apart from spiritual science would not then seek out the Anthroposophy thread to comment on what they apparently have no interest in, based on their own misunderstandings of what was previously written, and then proceed to level accusations of dishonesty at someone for associating the word "spirit" with "thinking" activity. So I guess your suggestion is to completely ignore these comments? I'll see what I can do.
My point is more that I'm not buying some notion that the egoically charged tit-for-tat trigger-effect, however or wherever it is perceived to be instigated by whomever, is just one-way traffic. We can all do our part to not make remarks that seem almost certain to provoke some triggered remark in reaction, which then just becomes a counterproductive distraction from the intended focus of the forum. So that is what I'm asking all concerned to give some mindful attention to, before hitting 'submit'.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
JustinG
Posts: 186
Joined: Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:41 am
Contact:

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by JustinG »

Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 4:31 pm
AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:19 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:15 pm
And so the trend of tit-for-tat annoyance continues. In this regard, I would also look to Cleric as an exemplar of how to engage without the trigger-effect.

Fair point. It would be nice if people who ask for fragmentation of the forum so they can carry on their own discussions apart from spiritual science would not then seek out the Anthroposophy thread to comment on what they apparently have no interest in, based on their own misunderstandings of what was previously written, and then proceed to level accusations of dishonesty at someone for associating the word "spirit" with "thinking" activity. So I guess your suggestion is to completely ignore these comments? I'll see what I can do.
My point is more that I'm not buying some notion that the egoically charged tit-for-tat trigger-effect, however or wherever it is perceived to be instigated by whomever, is just one-way traffic. We can all do our part to not make remarks that seem almost certain to provoke some triggered remark in reaction, which then just becomes a counterproductive distraction from the intended focus of the forum. So that is what I'm asking all concerned to give some mindful attention to, before hitting 'submit'.
Perhaps Shu you could exercise your pre-moderation powers more freely?




Papa Papa Shu Shu

When people making boo-boo

For little bit of time

Stop their posts from getting

through through
User avatar
Soul_of_Shu
Posts: 2023
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2021 6:48 pm
Contact:

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by Soul_of_Shu »

JustinG wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:01 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 4:31 pmPerhaps Shu you could exercise your pre-moderation powers more freely?
Maybe I'll put the entire forum into pre-moderation mode. Just the thought of it gives me a power-tripping adrenaline rush! But then it would likely mean the death of the forum, and then WTF would I do when I'm not walking in the forest ruminating over brilliant ideas, without all you dear Ones to share it with ?!
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
JustinG
Posts: 186
Joined: Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:41 am
Contact:

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by JustinG »

If you can play on the fiddle
How's about a British jig and reel?
Speaking King's English in quotation
As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust
Water froze
In the generation
Clear as winter ice
This is your paradise

There ain't no need for ya
There ain't no need for ya
Go straight to hell boys
Go straight to hell boys

Wanna join in a chorus, of the Amerasian blues?
When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh city
Kiddie say papa papa papa papa papa-shu take me home
See me got photo, photo, photograph of you
And mamma mamma mamma-shu
Of you and mamma mamma mamma-shu
Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood bamboo kid
It ain't coca-cola it's rice

Straight to hell boys
Go straight to hell boy
Go straight to hell boys
Go straight to hell boys

Oh papa-shu
Please take me home
Oh papa-shu
Everybody they wanna go home
So mamma-shu says
"You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime U.S.A?
In Parkland international
Hah, Junkiedom U.S.A
Where procaine proves the purest rock man groove
And rat poison"

The volatile Molatov says

Straight to hell
Can you cough it up loud and strong
The immigrants, they wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere
Most likely could be any frontier
Any hemisphere
No man's land
There ain't no asylum here
King Solomon he never lived 'round here

Straight to hell boy
Go straight to hell boy
Go straight to hell boys
Go straight to hell boys


(Adapted from Straight to Hell by the Clash)
User avatar
Soul_of_Shu
Posts: 2023
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2021 6:48 pm
Contact:

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by Soul_of_Shu »

JustinG wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 11:10 pm(Adapted from Straight to Hell by the Clash)
Clearly I'm faced with a generational disconnect here, but my eclectic appreciation for poetry of all sorts can still embrace a poet at heart.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
User avatar
AshvinP
Posts: 5457
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 5:00 am
Location: USA

Re: Anthroposophy for Dummies

Post by AshvinP »

JustinG wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:01 pm
Soul_of_Shu wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 4:31 pm
AshvinP wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:19 pm


Fair point. It would be nice if people who ask for fragmentation of the forum so they can carry on their own discussions apart from spiritual science would not then seek out the Anthroposophy thread to comment on what they apparently have no interest in, based on their own misunderstandings of what was previously written, and then proceed to level accusations of dishonesty at someone for associating the word "spirit" with "thinking" activity. So I guess your suggestion is to completely ignore these comments? I'll see what I can do.
My point is more that I'm not buying some notion that the egoically charged tit-for-tat trigger-effect, however or wherever it is perceived to be instigated by whomever, is just one-way traffic. We can all do our part to not make remarks that seem almost certain to provoke some triggered remark in reaction, which then just becomes a counterproductive distraction from the intended focus of the forum. So that is what I'm asking all concerned to give some mindful attention to, before hitting 'submit'.
Perhaps Shu you could exercise your pre-moderation powers more freely?


"Sympathy For The Devil"

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tzar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, hit it

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Post Reply